I know, I know, I suck at updating this, and this is one of those awful links to my self-hosting blog/site/thing.

I've had an urge to write very non-commercial fiction. It's nerdy dungeon fantasy stuff (it's partly inspired by sensible submission guidelines that say, "Don't send us this stuff") written in a style that I don't think is really accessible. I'm playing around with this instead of NaNoWriMo as a warmup for something more structured.

I'm still not feeling well, so I'm up and getting warmed up for the morning's work. So I'm gonna get my fingers moving with the topic above. These things annoy me:

There's No CPR on TV

As requalifying for First Aid/CPR a bunch of times has hammered into my head, when somebody isn't breathing or their heart has stopped you try resuscitation as long as you can manage it if it seems at all useful. But on TV, when somebody stops talking at a dramatic moment, they're just dead. Deadity dead-dead. This really pissed me off in Lost last week when Sayyid comes out of the pool with no signs of life, Jack actually starts CPR and Kate is like, "Don't you realize we're on TV, jackass? Your sensible medicine has no power here!"

On a serious note, I think this promotes muddled thinking in actual emergencies. Lots of people who look dead, aren't irreversibly so. Take a course.

Prisoner Transfer Via Concierge

Star Trek (all series) is the absolute worst for this. In the real world, moving a prisoner from one place to another takes a big team of armed guys and involves some elaborate truss-ups and manhandling. On TV, you maybe hold somebody's elbow, the way folks do at weddings to make sure you enter the buffet line in the right direction. Sometimes they just let you walk, and gesture threateningly with a gun. No handcuffs or anything.

Now this wouldn't be a big deal if we chalked it up to the visual language of TV, but most of the time the prisoner kicks everybody's ass and runs away. So this enables some lazy-ass writing.